Peace Activists Stage Memorial for Kidnapped American Quaker Found Murdered

American peace activists prayed yesterday for the killers of Tom Fox, a US Quaker who was abducted in Baghdad in November and found dead last week. Meanwhile three apparently coordinated car bombs and four mortars detonated in Baghdad's Shia district of Sadr City yesterday, killing at least 40 people and wounding 95.

Norman Kember, a retired British professor of medicine, and two Canadian members of the Christian Peacemaker Teams, were seized with Mr Fox by a previously unknown group, Swords of Righteousness Brigades. They were shown last week on a video but Mr Fox was absent. Children found his body on a rubbish dump. He had been shot and his hands were bound, police said.

"I pray for those who persecuted and killed him. I pray for the people of Iraq," Bob Sekinger, a member of the Hopewell Centre in Clear Brook, Virginia, where Mr Fox worshiped, told reporters yesterday after a short memorial service. Mr Sekinger said his murdered friend knew the dangers of Baghdad but considered his risk minimal compared with the number of Iraqis who were killed.

"Tom left his life as we know it with a clear sense that after 9/11 he felt he needed to do something very concrete to help create peace in the world," said Marge Epstein, another member of his Quaker meeting. In the West Bank town of Jayyus, where Mr Fox had protested against Israeli bulldozers destroying olive groves and building the "separation" barrier, Palestinians also mourned. "Tom used to sit in front of the bulldozers to block them," said Jayyus' mayor, Shawka Shamha. "Hearing news that he was killed makes me very sad."

Mr Fox refused to serve in a combat role in Vietnam and fulfilled his military obligation by joining the US marine band. "My dad wasn't a marine, he was a musician," said his daughter Katherine in a video statement issued after her father was abducted. "My father made a choice to travel to Iraq and listen to those who are not heard."

The Christian Peacemakers also took medicine to dangerous towns such as Falluja. They brought Shia and Sunni doctors and clerics together, and were urging the formation of an Islamic Peacemakers Team.

An Iraqi militant group affiliated to al-Qaida said yesterday it killed Amjad Hameed, the editor of Iraqiya, Iraq's state television, on Saturday. He was the fifth journalist to be murdered since the bombing of a shrine in Samarra two weeks ago triggered an outbreak of mass violence.